It’s easier to do it all the time.

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Sara

Getting your house in order – or even keeping in it order – is endless. I have just accepted it. Every day I spend time tidying, putting things away, throwing things out, wiping counters and a whole bunch of other things, because if I don’t, things get scruffy in a shockingly short time. I do it all the time, mostly without even thinking about it. I like it. Or at least I like the result.

It’s not about being obsessive. If you saw our house you would see that it is well lived in. It’s just that have found that things just don’t feel good when they are messy – and I like things at home to feel good.  Anyone who thinks that messy feels okay to live in for any length of time is kidding themselves, or is shut down in some way. If you are aware of your surroundings and have a reasonable desire to be happy, you will notice that messy does not feel good. Period. Clean and tidy feels good.

When I work with clients getting houses ready to sell, which I still do in my husband’s real estate business, my secret hope, beyond helping people to get a great price for their house, is that people will notice enough of a difference in how things look and feel in their place when it’s all done that they will take some of that experience with them to their new home. Before and after pictures cannot possibly capture the difference in a home that is clean and tidy – everything just feels different.

The trick is to keep up every day so that organizing your home never feels like a big job. And I mean every single day. The funny thing is, if I were to set aside a few hours to clean and tidy, I wouldn’t last half an hour.  I have no attention span for such things. But one, three, and occasionally ten minutes at a time, I am a dynamo. And 15-20 times a day that adds up! Try it out – you might even like it!

Letting go of pressure and obligation.

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Sara

pressure-at-workMore and more I have been catching moments of feeling free of pressure or obligation to accomplish something in my life – and being able to just be. I don’t mean opting out of life (on the contrary!), just living life with a deeper sense of trust and ease.

How about you? Have you ever wondered what you have accepted as “expected” or “normal” in life that is, in truth, not necessary—or normal?  Where do you put pressure on yourself to achieve or measure up in some way? Home is a great place to see where you put pressure on yourself – and lighten up.

Think about it. Have you accepted that it’s normal to feel stressed, full of self-doubt, worry, fear, anger and overwhelm? It may be common to feel that way, but it certainly isn’t “normal”.  Not unless you have been allowing it to be – in which case you might want to find yourself a new normal.

I believe that “normal” is living each day with a sense of peace and ease, with curiosity and kindness, knowing deep inside you that everything is all right. I believe that normal is feeling unconditional love inside you, knowing that you are safe, “good enough” and perfect as you are.  I absolutely believe that life is meant to feel good, beginning (and especially!) at home. Try that belief on for a while and notice the difference in how you feel. I may not always experience life that way, not yet, not all the time, but it’s happening more and more. And it is reflected in my home, both physically and energetically.

I think one of the reasons that people live in stress and “stuckness” at home is that they simply don’t know any better. They really believe that the way things are is “reality” and that there is no choice but to keep doing what they are doing and thinking what they are thinking. Acknowledging that you are the creator of your own life experience can feel scary, but for me not nearly as scary as believing that I am not the creator of my own life!

I made a decision to become happy a long time ago.  I knew nothing then of energy and healing and the power of thought, but I felt relieved just making the decision.  I hit my share of bumps along the way to happy, but I made it. It started with me choosing, and gets deeper as I let go of needing to accomplish something in life – and just do my best each moment. Ironically, if I had had my own book to read way back when I started, I could have gotten happy sooooo much faster! 🙂

The trouble with memories.

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Sara

MemoriesWhat do you do with memorabilia? My answer might sound harsh, but really, unless something has significant monetary or historical value, let it go. Even then, sell it or give it to a museum. Keep a few boxes of your favourite things, if you must–photos, letters, reminders of times that make you laugh and feel good, and let the rest go. Be ruthlessly selective about what you keep.

Here’s my theory: beyond the obvious problem of the physical and emotional space things from your past take up, memorabilia carries the risk of sparking the feeling, consciously or unconsciously, that the best times of your life are done. That’s not good, at any age. It’s depressing.

From where I stand, if you are fully engaged in your present life and excited about the future, your past isn’t going to be what you spend your time thinking about. It’s just not.

When my parents died, we found bins and bins of kids’ school books and other mementos that they had kept for years. No one ever looked at them. When I took delivery of my bins, I took one quick look through and threw everything out. Re-reading things I wrote in Grade 4 was slightly amusing for a bit but got tired quickly. I liked school but had no interest in re-living it.

There is maybe one good thing about memorabilia. If you can admit that you have trouble parting with stuff from your past, it allows you the chance to see the “why”– and let it go (i.e. heal). Start by asking– why am I keeping this (paper, object, photo)? Do I feel obligated? Why? To whom? Am I sad those days are gone? Do I need a reminder that I did something good? Am I afraid I will forget? Be forgotten? Do I think I need permission from someone? I am afraid of being callous if I throw this out? Whatever the limiting belief is, acknowledge it, give a wow of relief, and gently let it go.

Maybe I have a low need to reminisce, but I like what I am doing now.  I can still enjoy a few fun chats with friends and family about good times gone by but if too much talk becomes about the past it starts to feel a little weird. And boring.

I do allow my thoughts to go to the past if there is something unresolved emotionally that I need to work through to feel better now.  And then I let it go. Or, if there is something particularly funny that makes me giddy to think about, I can go there again and again–but even then only for a flash.

Really, stuff from the past just bogs you down.  It’s really the stories that keep the good memories alive anyway, not the “stuff”.  Just be here now and enjoy your life.

 

 

HALT - Safety First!Last night my niece and nephew were over for a game of euchre, and in the lively chit chat the across the table they talked about their training as YMCA summer camp canoe trip leaders.  One of the safety mantras they had firmly imprinted is something called HALT. They told us that HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Basically, they were taught for safety reasons (Safety First!), if you are feeling hungry, angry, lonely or tired do not get into your canoe. Stop, get yourself into a better frame of mind, and then proceed.

My niece, Alexandra, explained it to me a bit more, “We don’t just use it for whether or not to get into your canoe, we use it for any decision – “Do we run these rapids? Do we camp here?” and so much more that doesn’t apply directly to camping. As a leader (or just in life), if you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, you HALT, and then you reassess the situation, you don’t just blindly make decisions (life-threatening or otherwise) from a compromised position. If you are aware of how you feel, then you make safer and better decisions.”

What fabulous training! Everyone should have that rule – for everything! It reminds me of the children’s song Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

I teach something similar in my book HouseHeal: Transform Your Life through the Power of Home. Though my teaching is largely principle-based, I have one central very important rule for creating a beautiful, feel-good home, and that rule is take action only from a place of feeling good. Maybe HALT could also stand for Hold Always Loving Thoughts. If you take a look around where you live and notice yourself feeling sad, angry, overwhelmed, discouraged, scared or anything less than hopeful, do nothing. Taking action from that kind of low vibration emotion will only make things worse. Get yourself into a better frame of mind, and then get to work, clean your kitchen or organize your closet, from a place of hope and inspiration.

Whether canoeing or at home – stop and notice how you feel. Everything good begins with awareness. If you don’t have a practice of noticing how you feel, you can’t put into effect the most basic rule for your physical and emotional safety: HALT.  Go gently and easily with yourself, and you will be happier and safer, and go further.

 

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Sara | Leave a comment

What’s getting in your way at home – time or money? Guess again!

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Sara

When it comes to getting your home cleaned up, fixed up or organized, what’s in the way of you getting things done? Not enough time? Not enough money? Perhaps both? Maybe it’s other people? If that’s what you’re telling yourself, stop! Time and money, or even other people, are not the issue. They never are. Not really. When it comes to home, you always have choice in how things are and how things feel – that is, of course, if you understand how things work.

Photo credit: pinterest.com

It all comes down to one basic universal fact: everything is energy – and you and your home are energetically connected. Your home doesn’t reflect who you are (whew, huh?), but it does reflect how you are – and you can learn a lot by looking around where you live. If your home is messy, disorganized or lingering in disrepair, it’s a good indicator that something is out of alignment energetically within you. Basically, when your home feels “off”, you feel “off”, and when you feel “off”, your home becomes “off”. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing. So where do you start to make things better?

For your home to look and feel great to be in, start by slowly shifting the energy both at home and in you. Start with you. A few seconds several times a day, develop the habit of noticing your thoughts. Begin to observe what’s going on in your head. When you catch yourself with discouraging thoughts, stop. Breathe. Then let yourself feel what it’s like to say (and believe) something like: Whatever is here can be changed, with ease. I choose my life and I choose to live with order and beauty, beginning right now, right here in my home. All is aligned for me to move forward and I feel good about my life. I am ready to roll. Breathe and relax.

Now go and clean out a drawer. Do a load of laundry. Wipe off your kitchen counter. Pick the clothes up off your bedroom floor. Dust your bookshelves and carry a box of “pass along” books to the curb. Open your blinds and curtains and let the sun shine in. Replace a burned out light bulb. Pack up a bag of old clothes for charity. Clean one refrigerator shelf. Throw out something broken or worn out. Take focused action for just 3, 5 or 10 minutes (even one!), several times a day, gently pushing yourself a little if you have to, until making things better at home becomes part of what you do each day without even thinking about it. Consistency is the key. When you are ready (you will know!), you will find yourself moving up to 30 minutes, an hour, and eventually more at times, until you experience profound change at home.

Get excited as you begin to feel the weight of the world being lifted from you – thought by thought, day by day, action by action. Notice how earlier concerns about time and money dissolve as you step in to your power. Eventually, as you and your home continue to shift energetically upwards together, you will recognize what’s actually in the way of you getting things done at home: nothing!

A Spring Cleaning caution…and an invitation

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Sara

If Spring Cleaning is in your plans this season, use caution. Spring Cleaning can be great but it can also fool you into thinking that getting rid of “stuff” is a finite project or an annual event. It can also set you up for disappointment if you try to take on too much and then don’t make as much progress as you hope. Baby steps.

If you feel inspired by the emergence of Spring, go ahead, give an extra push to clear things out, clean like crazy…. just remember that creating a beautiful “feel good” home requires thoughtful attention and action – every day. A home filled with love and “good energy” is the by-product of a gentle, loving, continuous process, not just a Spring push.

To learn how to keep the magic of Spring working in your home throughout the year, join me this coming Monday, April 8th at 7 p.m. EST for my HouseHeal teleseminar (*free*!).

I not only will be sharing life-changing insights about creating a beautiful love-filled home and taking questions “live”, I will also be making a very special offer to people listening.  If you are ready for changes at home and in your life, don’t miss this call!  For details on how to join in, be sure to get on the e-mail list at www.househeal.com!

Remember, your home (and how you feel there) is a reflection of how you are, not who you are. Who you are is always beautiful!

 

Do you trust yourself?

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Sara

Pay attention – your answer to this question could seriously change your life: Do you trust yourself? Really? Do you trust when you truly deeply know something? Do you notice and trust when something doesn’t feel right? Not just every so often – but every hour of every day?

Whether you call it your gut, your intuition, your internal guidance, whether you feel it deep in your bones, as a chill up your spine or just a feeling you recognize, you are receiving really beautiful, helpful guidance all the time. But if you are like most people, you are often too “busy” to stop, listen and notice what feels right.  And you miss something vital to your well-being.

Your home gives you a spectacular environment to practice recognizing and trusting what feels good, what feels right to YOU. When you trust and follow what feels good and true, issues at home  – papers, clutter, décor, repairs, relationships, general overwhelm, whatever you are experiencing – begin to get resolved. Life becomes easier. And then the fun really begins! That’s what my teaching is about: living every day from what feels good to you, beginning at home.

To learn more about trusting what you know at home join me next Tuesday evening March 5th at 7 p.m. EST on my free live teleseminar. Be sure to sign up at www.househeal.com to get details on how to join in – and mark the date on your calendar! Bring your questions!

In the meantime, be kind to yourself, and remember that creating a beautiful, love-filled living space is one of the kindest things you can do!

 

No time? You can change that.

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Sara

Ever feel like you don’t have enough time, especially at home? Consider this fact: the statement “I don’t have time” is never true – unless of course it is a purely mathematical calculation of time, as in “I don’t have time to get to the store before it closes”.  In reality, you have the same amount of time as everyone else – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is up to you to choose how you spend it. Everything you do with your time, whether you realize it or not, is a choice.

Now stop here for a second, and breathe. This is BIG. In fact, this is a huge subject for a morning message! Your beliefs about time are entwined with deep emotions – and can enable you to avoid dealing with deeper personal issues (ouch!). But I want you to help you start questioning in ways that will make a difference to you. And nothing will make more of a difference to you than noticing what you do and think at home, and seeing how much of that doing and thinking is your choice. Be prepared to be shocked and amazed.

Here are 3 things you can do to feel like you have more time:

  • Stop telling yourself don’t have time. Really. If the words “I don’t have time” cross your lips – or your mind – hear alarm bells in your head. Thinking you don’t have time will make it feel real. So stop it. Change your thoughts. Resonate with “I have time for everything that is important to me. My days flow with ease.” and notice how different time feels.
  • Embrace the power of one minute. One of the biggest breakthroughs you can have around time is seeing for yourself just how much you can do at home in a minute or two. Especially when you feel like you don’t have time, take a minute to tidy the kitchen, make your bed, or put on a load of laundry – do something to contribute to the order and beauty of your home. Do this  several times day. This habit not only teaches you the power of a few seconds, it also raises the vibration in your home, and energizes you, making time feel expanded.
  • Admit where you have a choice. As you go through your day at home, ask yourself, does this activity contribute to me feeling in charge and excited about life? What can I do at this moment to bring love, order and beauty into my life at home? See where you have been “leaking” time. See where you are “avoiding” dealing with what is there, physically and emotionally. Begin to change your choices of activities, bit by bit, and notice how time seems to expand. Bonus: As you become more conscious of your time, you can also enjoy times of personal leisure on a deeper level as you let go of guilt around not being “productive”.

To learn more, read my book HouseHeal: Transform Your Life through the Power of Home. You can get a signed copy from me (sara@househeal.com) or order from Amazon.

Be sure you have Tuesday, March 5th at 7 p.m. EST on your calendar for my next fr*ee teleseminar!  

Also watch for more details soon about my new HouseHeal course starting April 8. If you are ready to make changes in your life, beginning at home, you will love this course!

Thank you for being with me on this beautiful path. I love hearing from you and knowing that this work is making a difference to you. Keep questioning – it is in the exploring that the answers come to you!

What it takes to live from love.

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Sara

Last week I confessed that I have been hiding behind the comfortable topic of “home”, rather than talking openly about what my HouseHeal teaching is really about – and that is learning to love yourself, beginning at home. When you are kind to yourself at home, you are pulled into inspired action, and your home becomes more organized, beautiful and filled with love, naturally . Here’s the trouble:  knowing that to be true does not make love and self-kindness suddenly happen. Living from love requires learning and practice. That’s where my teaching comes in.

When you learn how to see what is there, your home can give you hundreds of clues to help you recognize thought patterns that keep you “stuck”.  As you shift your thinking, step by step, action at home becomes easier, and life begins to feel different; life begins to feel good on a whole new level. That’s what HouseHeal is all about: feeling good about yourself and life, beginning at home.

If you are ready to make changes at home, here are some things you can do:

  1. Read my book from start to finish, and then read it again. The teaching goes      deeper every time – allow it to sink in. If you don’t have a copy yet, get a signed copy from me (sara@househeal.com) or order from Amazon.
  2. Mark your calendar and join me Tuesday, March 5th at 7 p.m. EST for my next fr*ee teleseminar! Thank you everyone who was on last week’s call and for your questions! It was fabulous!
  3. Imagine yourself taking my new HouseHeal course starting on April 8 – “live” from your own home – wherever you are in the world! This is a new course      designed to give you the deeper learning and personal support you need to      make real changes at home and in your life! Registration details will be      announced March 1 – but decide now to join in. If you want to take the course but issues around time or money pop into your head, have faith. If you feel      called to do the course, time and money challenges will dissolve – I promise. Just start to think about what you want for yourself now and get excited! More details to follow soon.

Thank you for being with me on this beautiful path. I love hearing from you and knowing that this work is making a difference to you. Keep questioning – it is in the exploring that the answers come to you!

I have a really powerful confession.

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Sara

I was at a house-warming party the other night and someone asked me “So, what is your book about?” I know I am supposed to have my perfect “elevator speech” ready to roll off my tongue, but I found myself stumbling and over-explaining, and not doing my book justice. The last couple of days I have been wondering why I have such a hard time answering what should be a really simple question.

The answer dawned on me yesterday as I was walking our new puppy. I realized that by saying to people that my book is about creating a beautiful, organized home, I have been attempting to play it safe. I have been trying to stay in what I thought was my (and other people’s) comfort zone while, ironically, I was feeling very uncomfortable.

So, here is my confession: I have been stumbling over questions about my book because I have been withholding the truth. I have been hiding. Not any more. I am ready to embrace the truth, which is the fact that even though you will experience a more beautiful, organized home as a result of applying the teaching in my book, that’s not what my book is about. My book is about loving yourself. My book is about loving yourself, beginning at home.

I wish you could feel how good it feels in me to finally say that. Wow. My book is about loving yourself, beginning at home. My book is about loving yourself, beginning at home. My book is about loving yourself, beginning at home. Your home is simply the feedback tool that helps you to bring more love into your life. Now I can’t wait till the next time someone asks about my book! What an incredible relief.

So here’s my question for you: What “comfort zone” are you clinging to that, if you were to be totally honest with yourself, is actually feeling quite uncomfortable? Ponder that one and let me know what you come up with! It could be a huge breakthrough for you.

If you are ready to love yourself more, beginning at home, remember join me tomorrow for a fr*ee HouseHeal teleseminar – it’s going to be a powerful one, with a special announcement:

Tuesday, February 5th at 7:00pm Eastern

Attend via Phone or Webcast – you choose!

DIAL IN: 206-402-0100*, Guest Code: 970859#

* To avoid long-distance charges use LOCAL Dial-In Numbers:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/Local/

OR TO ATTEND VIA COMPUTER, CLICK THIS LINK:

http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=37915887

Tell your friends to sign up on my web site www.househeal.com and join in too – all are welcome!